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Friday, November 12, 2010

News and Notes: Almost Tip-Off

Below, some early evening news and notes...

Another reminder: Albany's Athletics Department has confirmed for The Cornell Basketball Blog that Albany has opted to show video for tonight's game. A monthly subscription to Dane Zone is required. Click here to see the game. Get all the information you need about the Big Red's games this weekend at Albany (11/12) and Seton Hall (11/14) with The Cornell Basketball Blog's Game Preview Center.

EDIT: In my UAlbany season preview that ran Thursday, I said senior Tim Ambrose needed 28 points to reach 1,000 for his career. Not sure where I was looking when I was adding up the stats because Ambrose already has 1,051 points and sits 27th on the school's all-time scoring list.

Rutgers coach Mike Rice said today of his team's game at Princeton tonight, "They're Cornell-like good, top 40 team in the country good. They have size, they're skilled, they have depth. They have experience. To play against Princeton anywhere is tough, but now going to Princeton is going to be an unbelievable challenge."

The Columbia Spectator writes, "The 2010 edition of the Light Blue will operate in a much more up-tempo style, similar to the way St. Mary’s and Ivy rival Cornell played last year, with four players out on the perimeter and one inside...For the first time in four years, there is no Cornell in the Ivy League—no one team that is certain to dominate the rest of the Ancient Eight. While either Harvard or Princeton is likely to finish on top, it wouldn’t be impossible for Penn to overtake them. The middle of the league will be even more hotly contested, with Dartmouth being the only team with no chance of finishing higher than seventh... The Lions were picked to finish seventh in the league, but it is possible for them to exceed those expectations. An Ivy title is essentially out of the question—Harvard and Princeton are just too good. “You can’t be hung up on the results as much as the process,” [Columbia coach Kyle] Smith said, acknowledging that the program has to grow a bit more before it can compete for the league title. “It took Steve Donahue six or seven years to really put his imprint on that program.”

From Denny Kuiper of ACC Sports Journal, "Steve Donahue is an outstanding coach who proved at Cornell that he knows how to win. Will the returning [Boston College] players buy into Donahue? I think they will, because they have not had much success in the past, so they will be receptive to something new.